U.S. Economy Rebounds In Spring With GDP Expanding At 4 Percent Rate

NPR ^ | 07/30/2014 | EYDER PERALTA

[Wyatt's Torch]

yeah 1.5-2% is probably about right for this economy. Been sluggish for several years and won’t improve much past that with Obama in office. Too anti-business.

[Ben Ficklin]

OK freepers! Its time to go out and spend, spend, spend to stimulate the economy and make Obama look good, good, good.

[Incorrigible]

Bump for an excellent thread

[cherokee1]

Up a little-—down a little-—the Grand Kenyan’s apologists do their dammdest to make it sound like it’s not ZERO. But anyway as soon as you know whether you’ll need pink or blue Charmin I’ll be happy to chip in for a couple squares. I think I know where to order the pre-center-hole punched kind which you’ll need while you ponder anything coming out of DC.

[Sam Gamgee]

GDP is a faulty measure, ever since it was manipulated by LBJ. GNP was always a better measure, but GDP is used for political reasons.

[uncommonsense]

"Namely, since Q1 is a total loss in GDP terms, let's just remove Obamacare spending as a contributor to Q1 GDP and just shove it in Q2."

But will it offset the downturn in production due to the unforeseen hit from Russian sanctions...?

[familyop]

"The solid gains come on the heels of a first quarter when the economy shrank at a 2.1% pace. While still the worst quarter of the current recovery, the figure reflects an upward revision from a previously estimated 2.9% contraction. The economy only grew at about a 1% pace for the first half of 2014."

So which was the truth, and which was a lie?

[familyop]

"The increase in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), private inventory investment, exports, nonresidential fixed investment, state and local government spending, and residential fixed investment,"

That's funny!

[familyop]

The economy is doing so great, that convenience store retailers should raise the price of gas.

;-)

And BTW, the price of WTI crude oil is down near $99 per barrel. Those retailers should be making a killing this tourism summer.

[quimby]

Thanks for the info. Never new why when gnp used to be universal. Figures it would be political- kinda like the changes in inflation measurement.

[Phillyred]

Can we thank the sequester?

[itssme]

The strength of the economy today has NOTHING to do with oboma. It has everything to do with the ingenuity's of the Americans people who have made it so. And so obozo, as “pResident” gets the credit. But we know better. This country has shown economic growth in spite of obozo.

[dowcaet]

Tell me then if economic growth is now supposedly robust why did the number of people applying for unemployment rise to 302,000 this week as opposed to 279,000 last week? Nobody believes the GDP rose to 4% last quarter. If that’s the case we should be adding 302,000 new jobs every month instead of subtracting them. We’re living in Bizarro America now.

[Cubs Fan]

1. a nearly 7 point swing from -2.9 to +4 from one quarter to the next sounds impossible. Maybe I'm worng, but I'll bet that has never happened before. Forthermore...

2. the timing serves obama too well.

3. these have figures have been massively off and in need of revision before.

[Sam Gamgee]

Yes, LBJ was the first to “massage” inflation statistics. GDP is net after inflation. So if you can reduce the inflation number, GDP looks bigger than it really is. An honest person should actually quote GDP per person. Naturally if your population has grown 3% and absolute GDP is up 3%, you are actually not ahead of the game. So there are really 2 pieces of deception there - manipulated inflation rates, and highlighting the GDP overall percentage rather than per capita. Wall Street will ALWAYS focus on what turns their bread and butter, keeping people in the market, so they will never discuss GDP per capita.

[mikefive]

And anyone that doesn’t believe the net GDP numbers released just in time for mid-terms, along with an unemployment rate of under 6% are smoking crack

[RipSawyer]

I don’t believe it is growing at all in the real world, the inflation figures are far worse than they ever admit. Use a real inflation adjustment and the economy is probably shrinking. The official cpi figure says that $1.26 in 2014 is worth what $1.00 was worth in 2004. I say sure, and a flying pig is now worth what a Unicorn was worth in 2004. Growing economy? Horsefeathers!